Moving right along in what will be an ongoing chronicle of ETF registrations and launches, State Street became the latest to add a fund to the registration docket: The firm filed on Friday to launch a global real estate ETF, SPDR DJ Wilshire Global Real Estate. Here's the preliminary prospectus.

SSGA became the first firm to launch a non-U.S.-centric real-estate ETF in Dec. 2006, when it introduced SPDR DJ Wilshire International Real Estate. This new offering would presumably (code for: we're being a little lazy and not pulling up SPDR DJ Wilshire Int'l Real Estate's prospectus) be very similar to its older sibling, the obvious difference being that it will also hold U.S. real estate stocks.

The foreign/global real-estate field has grown increasingly crowded since the SPDR DJ Wilshire ETF's Dec. 2006 debut. Of the 23 real-estate ETFs that listed in 2007, nine invested principally in non-U.S. real-estate stocks. (Alps also recently registered its first ETF, which happened to be, you guessed it, a global real-estate offering: Cohen & Steers Global Realty Majors.) The largest of that bunch, WisdomTree International Real Estate, held $110 million in assets as of Jan. 31, 2008, followed by iShares S&P World ex-U.S. Property, which boasted $64 million.

Yet, SPDR re-enters the fray with one significant advantage: SPDR DJ Wilshire International Real Estate is easily the largest ETF of its type, with nearly $1 billion in assets. Thus, one would think it should be able to parlay its recognizable name in this space into demand for this new product.

As for the new fund's mandate, here's how the prospectus describes the strategy:

Principal Investment Strategies. The Fund uses a passive management
strategy and "sampling" methodology designed to track the price and yield
performance of the Dow Jones Wilshire Global Real Estate Securities Index (the
"DJW G RESI"). The DJW G RESI is a float adjusted market capitalization index
designed to measure the performance of publicly traded global real estate
securities that represent the ownership and operation of commercial or
residential real estate. As of [December 31, 2007], the DJW G RESI consisted of
companies from [Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong,
Italy, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland,
Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey,
the United Kingdom and the United States]. As of December 31, 2007, the DJW G
RESI was comprised of 243 stocks.

It's worth noting that the index will contain both REITs and real estate operating companies. For further details on the indexes, here's a fact sheet.

No word yet on expenses, though we would venture to guess it'll settle somewhere between 0.25% (expense ratio of DJ Wilshire REIT) and 0.60% (expense ratio of SPDR DJ Wilshire International Real Estate). Though mandates slightly vary, the current cost leader in this area is Barclays, which offers iShares S&P World ex-U.S. Property and iShares FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Global Real Estate ex-U.S. for 0.48% apiece.